Reborn

Chapter Two

“Nothing is more dangerous than a man who knows the past”

Twisting the knife

THE fire crackles and pops, burning away lingering moisture from the pathetically thin tree limbs. Starvation marks every aspect of life in Wave, it is a poor small nation on the brink of collapse. Nightfall has come yet the clouds formed from smoke shroud the stars. The wheezing sound of labored breathing comes across from him. The tugging sensation is the first hint Obito gets before he is assaulted with his clone's memories, information rattling his brain before it begins to settle. 

Obito learns the name of the girl before him, her name is Sakura. A gentle name for a gentle girl, he cannot help but think . Her name is Sakura and now she too is like him. Her teammates think she is dead, little do they know that she is alive and with him. The smoke swirls into the dark night sky, twisting and turning into itself until it is no longer visible to the human eye. Her breaths leave him on edge ( he fried her chest and the moon wept tears-) turning his intense attention to focus on the weak rising and falling of her chest. Obito fears she will stop breathing, a resurrected tomb of decaying sentiments slowly coming back to the weathered surface of his stunted emotional capacity.

“There is no such thing as Fate,” his decrypted teacher muses as Obito is paralyzed on the rough cot he is in, “remember this boy, there is simply chance and whether or not you decide to pursue it.”

He is pinned and cannot move; ringed eyes rip out every filthy truth.  

A loud pop from falling logs sounds too much like the torches in the buried tomb of his dead mentor, his head finally caving open in two; sharingan bleeding. The plan of world domination had taken up most of his life, and Obito was beginning to feel the strain of it all. It was a heavy mantle to wear, but there wasn’t anyone else who was worthy enough to lead it. Maybe he would become like his teacher with time, Obito shrewdly muses, but knows that the Uchiha will not make it to lead in future generations. Their bloodline is dying.

Even Obito wasn’t originally meant for the position he was in. He wasn’t Madara’s first choice as a successor but he had lived and that in itself was worthy to uphold. But there had been concerns on Zetsu’s part with how long it had taken to set the stage, their impatience was beginning to spark his annoyance. 

The Akatsuki was almost strong enough to start their plan, but how much longer would it take for them to finally make the first move? The Akatsuki still needed to collect bounties to fund their organization, and Rain’s resources weren’t enough to split between running the country and them. An agitated grunt slips from his damaged lips, a scowl painting his face and the plans that needed constant monitoring. Never a moment's rest. Obito would eventually leave his prime fighting years and would be privy to weakness, but he didn’t want to escalate the plan if he didn’t have to. 

Time was against him, that much was simple to deduce. 

Pein would use it to manipulate him one day. Obito had to gain another threshold to prevent any upcoming revolts and find a way to outlast him. Pulling his attention towards the girl in front of him, Obito’s throbbing eyes shake from the abuse he is putting them through but he cannot get enough of her features. Cannot get enough from the phantom that teases itself in front of his presence, twisting his black shriveled heart back to life. 

The right side of his body feels the phantom pain of crushing rocks mashing him open, the quick flare of pain before the shock settled in and got rid of the rest. Obito remembers Rin’s dainty, rough fingers prodding into his eye socket, the closest she ever got to his heart. Brushing up against his non-reactive eyelid, Obito thinks of the gift Madara had bestowed upon him. 

He understood the harsh hands and scathing words. 

There was no love on the battlefield, and yet here he was now: a slave to his own childish whims at the remnant of his past being laid out in front of him. Obito reminisces about his clones’ investigation. The echoes of damp poverty chiding his brain as he creeps into the shadows of dying trees and shallow graves. She had been on a bridge and she had been in battle (so young, he mourns, so young to die once again). But the most deliciously curious thing was that he was her teacher. 

Not surprising, Obito recollects, as he failed to protect Rin too. 

He let her die, again.

An old, all too familiar friend greets him in the basking glow of the campfire. Hatred makes his blood run ice cold. Old suffocated memories loam over the barely restrained grip on violence that threatens to ruin all his patience. Obito spits onto the ground, the quick, poisonous sound a precursor to the monstrous things crawling out of his skin. 

(Those who break the rules are scum but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.)    

His gloved hands grip together in front of his hidden face, the mothballs of his younger days falling away in front of him in the presence of this new predicament. Brown hair and brown eyes forever shut and buried in the massacre he had unleashed when he was no older than the girl in front of him. 

Obito wonders what she has learned, if she still will fanatically hold on to the hopes that her team will miss her like he once did. If she thinks that her team will go searching for her amiss the riverbeds of an impoverished town, but he already knows the answer.

They won’t, because they never arrived for him in the end.

Because Konoha was the worst of them all.  

A morbid thought conjures itself inside Obitos brain. 

How did it feel to be left for dead and forgotten with that dog for a teacher? 

An insidious, cruel part of him wants to see how the girl will react when she learns of this lesson. How she will uncover the falsehoods of a lying coward who uses bullshit as gospel. 

(A false pariah, his 13 year old self howls)

As if the tangled strings of Fate had heard him, the very subject begins to awaken. Rins doppelgänger winces as she arises from her slumber, unable to move from the broken bones she had obtained from the rough fall. It was a miracle that she was even alive, if not for him she surely would have drowned. He felt increasingly uncomfortable with the long dead side of his consciousness waking up at the breathing replica in front of him. 

Obtio thinks this is more than just a chance. 

Madara would have vehemently disagreed. 

Fate was a whimsical mistress, tricking you into believing it was on your side before it passed onto someone else. But for once Obito isn’t upset with being deceived, he feels that this is his chance to finally make things right. In another life, he hadn’t been able to save her and now with his new one, he has. The Uchihas had believed in reincarnation, that when a loved one dies they come back in the form of a close companion in your next life. They could come back as a friend, sibling, lover or animal which was why inter clan marriages hadn’t raised an eyebrow. You never knew how your bonds would be made in the next life, soul bonds had a weird way of manifesting themselves. Madara had believed this full heartedly but when he had been younger the concept had disgusted him. 

However, Obito had been naive and weak.

Dead.

Tobi was strong and vengeful. Tobi was alive and breathing. Tobi had been Madaras disciple, a new carved version of his mentor fleshed out into himself. Tobi needed to pass along his plan before he got too old.   

Besides, Obito hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. He had revealed himself, a mistake that he had never once made until now. She was now too much of a risk to let go, especially with all the lies that were hanging over her head. His red eyes slowly fade back to onyx. The mask that hangs around his neck is carefully put back onto his indented face. The crypt of his old self for once making him feel insecure about his appearance, Obito doesn’t want to scare her off. Doe eyes flutter open as the spark of consciousness flickers behind the apparent confusion that is settled onto her heart shaped face. Obito witnesses when the pain becomes apparent and how she turns her head to face him. 

He cannot help but think this is karma.